_“Good Marines shoot at where the enemy is. Great Marines shoot at where the enemy is going to be. Godlike Marines make the enemy go there.”_ - Bobby Draper, probably.
The tactic of having multiple weapons with various travel speed hit the target at the same it is called "Time on target". It is a very effective way of preventing the defender to be able to deal with each attack individually. It was used effectively in Babylon 5 when the Centauri battlecruiser attacked the station.
@@patrickhuffman9632 Another variation I heard about was to fire a high mortar sort of shot, quickly reload, fire a flat trajectory shot. My dog was trying to bite the water from above when suddenly there was another from the side. LoL
@@Calendyr 😂 let's be honest, as good as it was (especially for the time) B5 was hammy enough in spots. I'm hoping JMS is free from the interference he endured making it in the first place. I'm hoping. 🤞🤞
@@patrickhuffman9632 also known as MRSI or mercy Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact. The over pressure from it can be just as devastating as the attack.
Chest Puller would understand Bobbie, there is no such thing as quitting or as when he was informed that the Chinese had them surrounded his response was "Now we know where they are".
@@thomasb1889 There's an Ausie line too, if I remember right it goes something like - the Commander "We're surrounded? Then we don't need to worry what direction to shoot."
The Azure Dragon capture was pretty good too. I loved how the Roci's hull was left glowing red hot every time it passed through the Dragon's drive plume.
And you know that if Alex had been piloting, he'd avoid it. Especially since it's probably a belter tactic to try to burn pursuers with the drive plume
I love how every battle uses different tactics. The Amuh-Ra battle was much different than this one, just like the one last season against the Free Navy ships. The Azure Dragon required a different approach than the Pella
@Grim Looters I usually assume the magnetic containment that directs the drive plume out the back also collects the heat from internal radiators throws that out the back too. That way you don't need the radiators to be as exposed or as passive.
In the book, the Pella did dodge to starboard repeatedly which gave Bobbie the idea, but she also engineered a situation where they would dodge to starboard anyway by having her missiles coming from their port side, so they would sideskip away from the missiles.
Yeah, that makes the most sense. Honestly, the scene is so fast in the show that analyzing it like this is pretty much required to fully appreciate it. That's fine and good for a show and fanbase like the Expanse... Almost a sort of fan service to make 'overanalyzing' payoff.
Doesn't the book also make it very clear that the dodge is being done by The Pella itself where as the show seems to but a greater emphasis on the dodge tactic being done by the crew.
@@L8ugh1ngm8n1 While I haven't read the books yet, I would assume that the Pela's computer is doing the dodging, since no human could react fast enough to the railgun rounds. It is much more plausible to attribute the pattern to a computer.
@@L8ugh1ngm8n1 Id imagine its kind of like in Star Trek when the Captain can say "evade pattern Theta" and the helmsman just selects it from a list of pre-programmed maneuvers to dodge railgun fire, as no Human could react that fast. It would also stand to reason the Belter crew is still pretty green to top-shelf Martian warships and what they can really do, unlike xXX360NoScopeHoldenXXx that do crazy flying on the regular, Bobbie took advantage of their inexperience.
@@Luca-ok6sw it has to, the only way to deal with the free navy is a confrontation and the Rocinante can't do it alone, they will have to get help from the MCRN or the Inner sphere navies, it will probably have an outcome like firefly where the final episodes are leading up to and eventually coming to the conclusion.
The retrofitted belter ships are unlikely to have top-of-the-line military-grade sensors of purpose built warships like like the Pella and Roci, which might be another factor in how Holden’s crazy-Ivan shot worked. This could be why Holden decided to take his first shot at one of the belter ships instead of the Pella. Since the element of surprise only applied to the first shot, if the odds of success were the same no matter the target, it would have made most sense to take the first shot at the Pella, by far the biggest threat. If the Roci crippled the Pella with the first shot, it should have been able to comfortably handle the two remaining belter ships. The only reason why you wouldn’t want to shoot the Pella first is if you think it’s better sensors (and also expected better pilot) would have given it too high a chance of dodging the shot.
Also the belter ships are smaller and weaker to railguns. If you remember the Heavy Frigate that the roci attacked, the ship took a full 5 shots before the 6th shot put it out of comission. Most belter ships are small and can be put out by one shot.
I haven't seen the televised Expanse yet, but I'd think that the Free Navy would have networked their CICs together so that whatever any single ship is able to see is seen by the entire fleet. The best ship in the attack force is the Pella, so the Pella would probably see the shot coming before the other two, as you said. The main difference in reaction time between the Pella and the other ships, assuming equally competent pilots (once again, as you mentioned, Marco probably had the better pilot at all times) would be how long it took the Pella to inform the other ships that the Roci was doing a 360 "no-scope", and depending on how the network was set up, the other ships would either get the Pella's telemetry first and try to dodge, or their systems will have processed this in the time the Pella was transmitting (depends on just how much worse the Belter sensors are than the Pella's). The range at which the Roci is engaging here would mean that any delay in communication between the Belt vessels would likely be quite negligible, and since sharing your sensor data with your teammates is a common practice even in the modern day, this would largely negate what disadvantages the Belter ships had in seeing the shot coming, reducing the delayed reaction to the mere milliseconds it would take for the Pella to inform its comrades about the incoming danger. I'd put it down to pilot competence, or simply the less disciplined pilots staring at the screen blankly and going "Wuh? The? ****-" or something. Alternatively, Naomi could have been doing her thing and using the Roci's comm laser the way annoying kids sometimes use flashlights and (God forbid) laser pointers on their unfortunate victims. In the books at least, she would shine the comm laser right at the sensors of enemy ships to make it more difficult for them to aim, so if she literally uses the Roci to jam the enemy, then the Belter ships wouldn't be able to communicate with each other except (I assume) by tight-beam laser. Depending on how many tight-beam emitters the belter ships have, they might just be unable to communicate with each other effectively, or they would have to play hot-potato with the Pella's telemetry and pass the data from one ship to the next in essentially the same way some early computers were networked (sorry, I don't remember what this network structure was called! It's been a semester since I took computer engineering last) - everyone holds hands and passes data in a circle to your left while receiving data from your right, except with tight beams. If the victim ship was, in this structure, the "furthest" from the Pella (being the ship to transmit to the Pella, while receiving information as a hand-me-down from the other ships the Pella transmits to in the chain), and assuming Naomi can jam all of them at once and force the Free Navy to rely entirely on tight-beam, then the reaction time of one of those Belter ships would lag behind a significant amount, depending on how many tight-beams it takes for the Pella's information to finally reach them. All jokes aside, it is also likely that the Pella's maneuvering systems are more optimized for combat and might be able to accelerate and maneuver laterally faster (e.g. the ship being a combat vessel means it likely has better thrust/mass ratios than the Belter-built ships, as well as more responsive controls) though since I know nothing about the TV series and the ships used in this sequence, I have no honest idea how massive these ships might be. Just wanted to contribute something to the discussion, even though for the most part I have no idea what I'm saying.
@@thursdaythought7201 I think it's mostly a matter of luck. A single railgun shot could probably take out any ship regardless of size. A single shot nearly took out the Pela and it's a cruiser. The round only needs to go through the reactor to kill the entire ship
@@SuperThest it could take out any ship in one hit but smaller ships are almost certainly gone in a single hits while larger ships, due to their size and increased armor, are less likely to be hit in a critical location (aka the reactor).
Honestly, I kind of like that the free navy just makes mistakes, espescially facing a railgun. I generally tend to find hyper competence by weird rebel groups and pirates in symmetric warfare to be a bit immersion breaking, and honestly a touch lazy. I think the Expanse has done a great job at showing that Inaros forces are at their strongest when they're doing things traditional planning would never have foreseen, and having them be really good at traditional combat almost takes away from that to me?
Ya, the Free Navy is great at coming up with an unorthodox plan to overcome their weakness in the face of a superior enemy when they control the timing and location of the battle and then following that plan to the letter, but any time they have to improvise to respond to something they do not expect, they often face plant. Their first plan to destroy the _Rocinante_ with a booby trap was only thwarted by the _Razorback_ happening to be the first to get there (they would have been destroyed instead) and Naomi's godlike engineering ability. Their second plan to take down the _Rocinante_ in combat in the last episode of S5 would have almost certainly worked if Drummer hadn't intervened. Following a check list is easy, making split second decisions when things go pear-shaped is hard. Marco basically yelled "Squirrel!" and then rushed in without a plan beyond having superior numbers.
@@GuardianOwl Yeah- it sort of comes down to relying on tactical genius rather than actually having good fundamentals. Unfortunately, I do find the Expanse struggles to convey competence a bit in general. It did a great job in the fight with the Donnie, but from there on it started to feel less and less like any ship that didn't contain a hero was crewed by anything at all (The attack on the ring-gate coming to mind first.).
It would stand to reason the Pella's Belter crew are still rock hoppin' Belters more than hardened Martian soldiers, likely still not that familiar with their shiney new warship or its full capabilities. Inaros got by initially on populism and terrorism, but now the inexperience of his rag tag fleet will be their undoing battling guys like Holden that fight above their weight on the regular.
It’s quite logical, actually. Any reasonably intelligent and well informed individual can put together a decent plan. Making snap decisions under pressure requires training and experience. A professional will always beat a skilled amateur in their field -- especially warfare. For reference, it takes 4 years to train a cadet to be an officer, and that officer candidate will be learning lessons that cannot be gained except from the training experienced officers and soldiers can provide.
@@adamkares7549 And the fact that Inaros spaces people who fail him. Holden and team (minus Alex) have worked together for a long time and built up a lot of trust.
I really loved how Marcos said (in this same episode?) that the Free Navy was going to pick apart the UN and MCRN forces with hit-and-run tactics. Then as soon as he pride gets involved he "goes Inner" and charges haphazardly at the Rocinate who decisively defeats him with a literal hit-and-run tactic.
It was overconfidence. One of their ships was more than enough to take on the Roci and they had 3 so basically overkill. What he failed to consider is the fact the crew of the Roci was already at peace with dying and was ready to do anything and everything just to put in as much hurt as they could which in turn led to their victory thanks to performing unconventional dangerous maneuvers
I am so sad to see The Expanse go after just two more episodes. Season 6 is really bitter sweet to me. What I really like about The Expanse battles is how they are different from each other. They're all their own scenarios with very different resolutions which go far beyond Star Trek's or Star War's usual battles of ducking it out until one side has no more shields and explodes.
True this is a bit bitter sweet of an ending. That said the next Chapters in the story happen decades after this. I have no doubt we'll see more of the Expanse. Just not with the current people in it.
After season 6 I'm going to have to start reading the main books. While the producers hinted at the possibility of the last 3 books getting to screen sometime in the future I don't to want to wait that long.
@@armedmage both are amazing. This isn't a situation where I can go "the books are better", since the show handles the foreshadowing and character introductions better... But the books action scenes are "higher budget" Books 7-9 would be really expensive to make, since the action gets bigger. That combined with the time skip is understandable. I'm still hoping for a trio of movies to cap it off.
I feel like the show did its absolute best to recreate this book chapter, and they did an outstanding job all things considered. However, in my humble opinion the book sequence just cannot be topped. The tension, the desperation, and the teamwork between Bobby (as the gunner) and Alex (as the pilot) just cannot be topped...
@@TealJosh Much as I appreciate the drama of it, I think Fred's death in the series worked better. His character almost seemed played out by this point in the book, and you can see it in how he is discussed and his own feelings about things in his POV chapters, whereas on the show he went down more at the height of his relevance and it made good sense the Free Navy would do this as part of their opening play. His dying when he did on the show had much more impact on the overall plot even though less personal impact for the main cast.
In the book the ship always dodge the same way, Boby even remembers a instructor of hers talking about how doing anything more than 2 times is a mistake
The book mentions a specific reason why the Pella did it. "Twice the Pella had dodged the rail gun. Both times by firing all her port maneuvering thrusters-sidestepping-and then correcting on the starboard. It kept her pointing the same direction, not veering away." They just made a habit out of it. There is nothing in there about combat instructors in relation to the tactic that put the Pella out of commission. It is only in relation to the rail gun spin that the instructors are mentioned.
@@lucasrembold1144 The battle is primarily described in Chapter 27 of 'Babylon's Ashes'. Instructors are mentioned only once, in one paragraph. "A high-speed three-sixty with a precision-timed rail gun shot halfway through the spin wasn’t exactly standard combat tactics for Martian frigates, but she thought her old combat-tactics instructors would have approved." Am I missing something?
@@lucasrembold1144 Yes. They are described as a chink in a armor. "She fed the firing solution in again. The moment of sickening spin, the bang of the rail gun, the crack of the couch taking her in. But the Pella did it again. It dodged the same way. It was a pattern, and patterns were gaps in the armor. She could fit a knife in there."
Isn’t Bobbie’s tactic a small scale version of Marco’s own “stealth meteorite” tactic, with the PDC rounds playing the role of small, effectively invisible projectiles?
I guess it is. The difference though is that Bobbies attack worked on The Pella moving in to the fire and required some additional tactics to encourage the situation to occur. Marco's tactics worked more on the hubris of the MCRN and UN just parking three battleships in a fixed orbit next to the gate. After all who's going to take on two Trumans and a Donnie? Another thing to note is that while the tactic is used offensively in the show and Marco is given credit for the attack in the books it's actually Michio Pa that comes up with the tactic and suggests it as a way of defending the gate and Medina from being retaken.
Which was also something that Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about in the book "2312". Clusters of small meteoroids all meet at the same time and place in space, directly over a target. Instant obliteration because of the tracking gating size they use.
Really the only thing that didn't translate over from the books was the incredibly punishing transition between high-g and free fall and back the crew had to endure every time the Roci flipped to fire the rail gun. The show often does a good job factoring in the physiological constraints of the folks onboard these ships, and it added so much tension as written in the book, so it's a shame it didn't really make it into this scene. Otherwise, this was very satisfying.
One thing that The Expanse has tripped up on is its depiction of the physiological differences between Earthers, Martians, and Belters in general. I remember in the first season the actor that was cast to play the Belter in the interogation scenes on Earth was really tall and slim, and it was shot in such a way that his physiology was exagurated and gave him the almost alien look that (as I understand) Belters have in the books, whereas as the series has gone on these physiological differences are almost ignored completely. At one point they touched on the fact that Earth ships can accelerate harder than Martian ships not because of their technology, but purely because the Earther crews are more resilient to the Gs involved. I wish they did more with that as it's rarely come up in actual space battles since. Also it would be cool to see the strength differences between groups play out in a hand to hand combat situation given that an Earth would seem almost superhumanly strong compared to a Belter.
On the rail gun range, you need to take into account that the target is also moving(Edit: accelerating) in opposition to the round therefore the closing speed is higher and the effective range is greater.
It doesn't really matter, because the ship itself is also moving away from it's target. The only real factors are the distance and relative speed between the 2 vessels. Based on the dialogue of Marco saying "keep distance from the ship", the relative speeds should be close to 0, assuming that both ships were accelerating at roughly the same rate.
@@basedandredpilled7920 But as taking from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where the First Order was chasing the Resistance. In a realistic scene, both group of ships wouldnt be needing to burn fuel for moving. But as the chasing ship want to chase up, they do need to burn to keep accelerating, which means the chased ship would need to do the same for getting away. In theory it comes down to which of the ships had a better accelerating and rocket/booster power to shrink that range, so I think in a way both of you are correct
@@basedandredpilled7920 I was thinking that, base on what happens the relative speed of the round origin point to the ship it's shooting at should be closer to 0, I don't think the Pella would gain much in the time it takes for the round to reach it
If both ships are moving at relatively the same speed and direction, then from their frame of reference there's no difference between this and the ships being relatively stationary. The round is moving in opposition to the target, but it was fired from a ship that wasn't, and that momentum is conserved.
My guess for the PDC's is that the Corvette-class Martian frigates have a pretty huge amount of point defense for a small vessel. The Morrigan-class destroyer is like 3/4ths the size of a Corvette-class and only has 2 PDCs, whatever class heavy frigate the Serrio Mal is from the season 5 finale had the same amount of PDC's as the Roci, but was much larger, heck the Pella is a light cruiser, probably many times the size of the Roci and the Pella only has 9. You put 6 point defense cannons on a ship whose size normally would warrant 3-4, you're gonna need a LOT of missiles to overwhelm those defenses since those missiles have a very small target with those unusually high defenses. Also neat little detail, on Holden's console for the railgun, it says "1 kg Tungsten slug loaded." The light railguns seem to be about the same caliber as the PDC's, which are 40mm shells. A 40mm Bofor shell weighs about 2 ish pounds, which is about one kilogram. Goes to say just how much more damage a projectile can have just by going faster.
It also helps that the Roci was likely meant to be an escort for the MCRN Donnager. It'd make sense to have more turreted escort vessels with the pride of your fleet.
It's always been my opinion that the Roci and her class are close support frigates, which explains why some can be carried inside a Donager Class battleship. They're only sortied when the Battleship needs more support, which isn't often so you may as well save on oxygen and reactor pellets by keeping your support docked until needed.
@@chrisdufresne9359 I think the Wiki says the Donnager-class can either hold 4 Corvette-class frigates or 8 Morrigan-class destroyers. I'm guessing a Donnager-class would hold Morrigans for more offensive engagements and Corvettes for more defensive engagements.
@@brooklyn560 Same. I'm wondering if the Nathan Hale-class is the equivalent of the Xerxes-class in the books? And also Force Recon for the MCRN light cruiser (I'm pretty sure it's the Raptor-class, but I'd like to be sure) and the MCRN heavy frigate (I've seen some Screaming Firehawks refer to it as the "Orion-class"?).
One thing I am loving with the new season is the camera work on the ship exteriors. They're taking their time to show off the details of the amazing ships they've created, and I'm absolutely loving it!
The expanse has the best detailed space battles. Like in the episode where they are chasing down the spotting ship, you could see the hull glow red every time they got too close to the drive cone. The little details make rewatching them so much fun.
That the support ships are also retrofitted industrial ships probably also means they wouldn’t have combat computers that could detect/avoid rail gun fire.
It may be that pilot also is not experienced to combat railgun fire. Not much belter ships have it I suppose. Belters are cool and all but their warfare is mainly pirating. Large scale ship combat may not be in their expertise. While inner pilots would have extensive training in this kind of combat because their main adversary was other inner fleet.
@@modisp Agreed, though Spacedock already covered that angle as well. Just wanted to also mention another detail about the scene that explains why the Roci crew didn't just have plot armor.
@@modisp consider that apart from the Roci and the stealth ships, the *smallest* ship you see with a railgun is a HEAVY CRUISER. Since no-one has fought a stealth ship and survived apart from the Roci crew, and up until that fight no-one has ever fought the Roci and survived, it can be said that the only living people that have ever fought a ship smaller than a heavy cruiser with a railgun mounted are the crew of the only remaining ship smaller than a heavy cruiser with a railgun mounted....
The expanse battles are great examples of how to do the tension in space combat correctly. So often it's just "Shields are at 80%, Shields are at 60%, ..." And the shields levels never make sense as the first couple hits take shields down below 50% in like 3 shoots then the ship survives like 6 more shots and it's like shields are really low we can only take 2-3 more hits and it's like... WHAT!?! The math doesn't add up there. The threat and dangers are so inconsistent that it makes it hard to take anything serious. Where as in more grounded space combat shows there often is no shields and it's more like traditional naval warfare where a single lucky shoot can mean the difference between life and death. Where planning and positioning matter more than who has the biggest guns. It also builds more tension as you can have grazing hits which do damage but don't cripple the ship causing secondary issues to arise, like fire, vented air, and etc.
Yup, the only reason shields were ever invented, is so that showmakers didny have to damage their very expensive spacecraft filming models, with todays tech things like the expanse can luckily be made :)
I always had a thought about how to do shielding without following the usual 'invisible energy bubble' effect, that would also be reasonably realistic for a shield: Ferrofluid drawn out and shapred into a shield by magnetic fields, that way you can see when the 'shield' is up, and when it's being damaged by incoming fire splashing against it, possibly pierce through the shield, and hit the hull
you dont understand. shields at 50% with first shot. with second shot shields at 25% with 3 rd shot 12.5% do you understand. 100% are most vulnerable and go down 50% in this case a factor 0f 0.5 reduction per shot. or it could 0.4 0r 0.6
Love the battle and the CGI used. Really want to see The Lost Fleet series of books done. The space battles there are truly amazing in their description and blows most others out the water!
There’s a lesser-known game I like called Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. The early parts of the game are set in a solar system not too unlike the Expanse. Now they don’t have Epstein drives or any other means of ships being able to zip around (except fighters, but those are hardly a formidable force), and the designs are a little more grounded and boxy. Your initial ship, a heavy corvette called the Stiletto actually has engines at both ends (three on the back and two on the front). This allows it to slow down without flipping around (which is pretty slow). The game also shows thrusters firing whenever ships are maneuvering (and also thrusters firing to stop a turn). Many of the heavier ships have rotating rings to provide pseudogravity for long interplanetary voyages (a typical trip from Earth to Jupiter takes many months). When I see those ships I immediately think of B5’s Omega or the Leonov from 2010 (which inspired the Omega). I honestly wish that lasted longer than a few missions before you start getting into futuristic designs and battles. One interesting tidbit is that most weapons in the game are turreted. Only one weapon in the game is of the “forward firing” type: the siege laser, and that one is basically a massive beam designed to break through powerful fortress shields and requires the combined power output of three ships to charge and fire (during that time they can’t do anything else). So fights often involve ships maneuvering to bring other turrets to bear on the enemy, while also trying to dodge in order to throw off enemy targeting. Early on, there are three types of weapons: ballistic, laser, and missile. Railguns are the basic ballistic guns, and they use to hit the enemy hull until the integrity drops to critical (usually 25%), at which point the ship will begin evacuating the crew, leaving behind a floating hulk (it can be destroyed, but there’s no point). Lasers are for precision subsystem targeting and do very little hull damage. They can be invaluable in disabling certain enemy systems, though, although your sensors first have to identify them. There’s also an automated laser flak grid that will attempt to shoot down fighters, shuttles, escape pods (yes, that’s allowed), and missiles (it’s usually a good idea to keep fighters grounded until the enemy flak grid is disabled or destroyed). Missiles are limited in number and are usually a long-range artillery option. A hit can deal significant damage to the target and anyone around it (it’s usually a nuke), but a good flak grid can intercept it. A fighter screen can also add a secondary layer of anti-missile defense. Later on, you get into futuristic tech and stuff like shields and their counter: the energy shells. Energy shells are designed to knock down or overload shields but do no physical damage, so that’s when you switch to ballistic weapons, which usually aren’t great against shields
I watched this battle again every day after it aired. :D The 360 no-scope railgun shot is amazing and then Bobbie's PDC trap is just perfection. My only quibble is that they fire another torpedo at the Pella at the end, rather than putting a round from the railgun through them to cripple the ship. Plotwise, it's so Holden can disable it, but strategically it made sense to go for the option that wouldn't definitely blow the Pella up if they didn't really want to destroy her.
@@PetersonZF Once the Pella was taken out it stopped accelerating, while the Roci was still burning full tilt to get away, and there was no sign they had flipped to decelerate during their surrender demand to Inaros. Its probable that the Roci had simply gone too far for effective railgun targeting and turning to slow down or remanuver to bring the railgun to bear when they did not have too makes sense.
a railgun hit could simply go throught the ship without causing fatal damage.. like the Donnager being pierced clean throught.. a nuke warhead missile was definitily a kill .. i mean what would they do? railgun the Pella until some hit pierced the reactor bottle and vaporized it? when a single missile was all they needed
@@sparrowlt That's my point... Holden specifically didn't want to destroy the Pella. But he overlooked the option of fucking it up with the railgun, which left at least *some* chance of taking Marco alive.
I wish you would have zoomed into the roci‘s tactical screens the show showed the total torpedo complement including that they fired 4 torpedoes and the PDC’s that jammed has more pic rounds
and also that the railgun held 'seven in the clip and one in the hole'.... not important in this particular battle, but it meant that during the earlier Roci vs 5 FN ships battle, since they fired 2 at the destroyer and 6 at the frigate, the Roci's railgun was DRY at that point - which probably explained Holden's desperation in wanting the other ships (which turned out to be Drummers, but he didnt know that) to surrender - he knew his magazines were dry, the FN did not.
Regarding the reliability of the Roci’s pdc guns, maybe the ship has machine learning capabilities, and the more torpedoes thrown at it the better it gets at shooting them down. The time period previous to the books/show had few full blown battles like this (remember the Captain of the Donnager drinking coffee during the battle), so the Roci has tons of real world experince. So what I’m saying is the Roci is a Saiyan in ship form.
As much as I'm going to hate seeing an end to your Expanse videos after the series wraps up, I'm really looking forward to your Top 10 Expanse battles after season 6 concludes.
I believe that the Belter pilot programmed the maneuver and set it on auto (the alternative of doing it manually is nonsense). But since a) Belters are not the best trained for open conflict. And b) corvette sized ships with railguns are still a new-ish thing of the last 5 years or so. It was always the same maneuver without rotating the side movement.
It'd be hard to do many things in high G, so it'd make sense to offload a lot of trivial maneuvers on the ships computer. Just another macro. At least, that's how I imagine flying a ship in the future will be like, just more of the same trivial moves, so why not make macros to ease the job?
Although maneuvers like that are usually preprogrammed, it appears that military pilots from Earth and Mars are used to plot different scenarios and different maneuvers into their ship AI. The Belters simply are inexperienced in open combat and don't understand the importance of drilling for different combat scenarios. That's why they programmed such simple evasive maneuver.
New-ish? More like completely unique. The only other ships smaller than a HEAVY cruiser with RGs were the protogen stealth ships. And the only person alive to see them in combat is.... Holden, who commands the only remaining ship that size with one. The only other people alive who have seen a railgun on a sub heavy cruiser in battle are Drummer and her crew, and the Tycho Roci crew (Bull ect). Even ships the size of the Pella dont have railguns in the MCRN, UNN, and FN.
Awesome. That kind of skill and luck happens in real life as well, as this reminded me of HMS Venturer sinking U864 in WW2. Both subs submerged, U864 maneuvering in three dimensions, HMS Venturer's captain works out the firing solution and sinks the U-boat with a spread of torpedoes. No AI, no fancy modern computers. For anyone that questions how such pin point timing on gunnery could possibly pay off, chances are someone in history has been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
When you guys get the chance, could you PLEASE do a breakdown of the UNN's new _Xerxes_ Class Battleship? The thing's a freaking monster, it even gives the _Donnager_ Class a run for its money
2:25 While I'm sure there's plenty of plot armoring here, the in-universe reason for the Corvette-Class Frigate having such effective point defences is that it was designed to help screen targets for larger ships and battle groups such as the Donnager-class and other MCRN capital ships. Some UNN and MCRN ships that are several times larger than the Corvette-Class have a similar or even lesser amount of PDCs
Indeed. One of the things I like most about the Expanse is that warships have clearly defined roles. I particularly liked the implication that if the captain and crew of the Donnager hadn't been so cocky and had launched their frigates for the battle, they wouldn't have lost to the Protogen stealthships but because they chose to fight unsupported by their screening ships...
Thank you for this excellent analysis and commentary. The hard science of Expanse battles happens so quickly on screen, it needs slow-mo retrospective in order to be understandable. Your combat breakdowns absolutely enrichen the fan experience of this show!
I remember watching this on show. I was astounded and though "whoaw what a great tactical move" when I saw the Roci shoowing PDC rounds off target and the Pella dodging into those rounds.
On the subject of accurate shooting, I can’t help but recognize just how important this is in historical naval combat. Submarines are an example of ships where the crew is the most important element to creating a successful ship. Maneuvers were important to be sure, especially speed to get ahead of your prey, but accurate shooting was critical. At best, a German Type VII submarine had 12 torpedoes inside the boat (and two reloads outside), while a Type IX had 12-15 if carrying overload weapons (I’ve only seen 2 of the 3 occupied at once). A typical US Fleet Boat had 24 weapons. If you ran out, you had to head home or if you were lucky attempt to take on torpedoes from another submarine (not necessarily a dedicated supply boat). Accurate shooting is paramount, which is why some submarines boasted about getting at least one hit every time they fired or, in the absolute best cases, a clean sweep with a hit for every torpedo fired (such as Tang’s final patrol, although her last torpedo sank the boat). In naval gunnery you often have examples where certain ships have extremely good accuracy. At Jutland Iron Duke fired 43 rounds in 4:50 at Koenig at a range of 12,600 yards for seven hits, but the other ships in the same battle line had far more difficulty getting individual hits due to haze and smoke. In other cases, the fire control is the deciding factor. At Denmark Strait Hood had very outdated fire control and was the only one of the four major combatants not to score a hit. Prince of Wales scored rather well given the weather, gun breakdowns, inexperienced crew (at least for the ship), and her extremely limited working up period. But the Germans had the better visibility, good enough fire control, and a proper working up period to train their crews, with both German ships hitting Hood and Prince of Wales at least twice in the incredibly short battle. Denmark Strait also illustrates another point relevant to this battle that could be used in some sci-fi. When Prince of Wales was turning, her precision would decrease: the turn spread her shots out more than when she was holding a steady course. Every shot has some inherent spread regardless of weapon (though some are better than others), and this is an element that would likely still exist in space combat.
Spread in earth exists mostly because of the air, temperature and humidity. You dont have those in space. If your guns are properly aligned your are good, railgun in particular where there is no chemical reaction (another source of variation) should be pretty consistent as long as your firing systems are good
@@nahuelleandroarroyo Spread, or more accurately imprecision, is inherent in any system no matter the location. To have a system that precisely placed a shot in the same spot every single time you must ensure that all the forces are identical (to the Newton), that every single piece (including ammunition) is identical between actions (no wear), and that every single piece is in the exact same location down on the micrometer level (no thermal expansion, critical in space combat). That level of precision requires very costly systems, which is why snipers get better ammunition than the average infantryman. In this case, we know the ship is maneuvering differently in a straight shot vs. an over-the-shoulder shot. Relative to the bore axis, this introduces a lateral force that would, all else equal, tend to send the shot in the opposite direction of the flip. This lateral force would also introduce additional variables, such as causing the round to have different contact with the barrel components and different interactions with the magnetic fields that propel it. These inherently introduce different mechanics to the point of impact. You see this all over the place. For example, a tubular magazine underneath a rifle barrel means the weapon vibrates slightly differently with the first and last round in the magazine. On earth or in the vacuum of space, this means there is a different point of impact depending on how full the magazine is. Thermal control is critical in many systems on earth and every system in space, and thermal expansion would change the precision of any followup shots. Barrel wear is a major precision problem, and all firearms have a certain barrel life rating as at a certain point the barrel must be replaced.
It truly was a shame seeing how they done alex and even the drama behind the scenes I don't think justifies what was decided. Have him apologise publicly and move on. If not re cast him, at least then he's not dead. That said, I think they done justice to the character by mentioning everything he done for the crew, for the rocci and the guilt and grief they all carried with alex being gone. Still a bitter pill to swallow.
@@Marth667 After 5 seasons, recasting Alex would’ve been distracting. And I can’t imagine anyone replacing him. Still the crew could use another Belter or Martian. My wish would be if they come back for a season 7+ they could cast someone to play his son and take the helm. What happened off set was tricky. The legal team, HR and PR’s advise would’ve been to drop him, at least until they knew how the it play out. I’m disappointed with the decision, but I can understand. I don’t know much about Cas beyond what Wikipedia says and his work on the Expanse to truly judge him personally, nor did I witness what happened. Better people than me are needed to make those type of calls.
I think what I love most about the way this battle was shot was how the sweeping camera angles really sell the idea of a high speed chase at great distances, as well as clearly establishing who's got the high guard in the chase and what advantages it provides.
This was one of my favourite battles in all of sc-fi. Engines with equivalent power installed at opposed ends of a ship would be stupid, ESPECIALLY in the expanse: You spend 99% of your time accelerating/deaccelerating to force the crew into the deck and provide a sense of gravity. Two engines means twice the complexity and weight, which isn't bad by itself, but then factor in you can only ever use one at any time which basically makes it utterly pointless. The small/med ships can flip and burn really fast...as seen from just this battle alone.... So what's the point? Larger, slower flipping ships would just have an aft rail gun....
@@Wintermute909 Yeah, it don't make any sense with the razorback either. It's a fast racing ship so you would think extra mass to fling about would be a concern, and i would hazard a wild guess that another whole freaking engine core and drive cone would be basically the majority of the mass in the razorback in the first place... It would be the equivalent of installing another engine, gearbox and 4 wheels on an F1 car which you can't use unless it goes backwards...
So I was thinking about how you mentioned the efficacy of the Roci's point defense weapons. I though of this as a potential explanation of why a hero ships defenses might be better than their opponents. Let's imagine that the automated defense systems are controlled by a machine AI. These AI can be trained to a point in simulators prior to installation on a ship, but they would continue to learn as they were involved in more and more conflicts. The Roci was originally the Tachi which was a ship assigned to the flag ship of the MCRN and probably had a long and distinguished carrier prior to us even meeting her. This would have allowed the AI system to learn more and more about how to hit oncoming missiles. Then after Holden and Co get her she gains even more data to improve the AI. Eventually leading to a superior targeting system.
It's also worth noting that the class of ship in question is partially designed to escort MCRN battleships, so has a disproportionate number of railguns relative to size.
I really do appreciate y'all making The Sojourn in an audio format. Beyond the added benefit of sound effects, music and different voice actors for different characters, the audio format allows me to enjoy your writing in general. I have vision issues and don't often read hardcopy books or digital copies of books because it's harder for me. I read very slowly and process what I read slowly, and with such a great series being in audio form, I don't miss out on it. Thank you Spacedock
Glad you're enjoying it! The audio medium is something I really get a lot out of and it's been super rewarding writing and producing for that format. - Dan
Always look forward to a Spacedock breakdown of a Rocinante Space battle, hopefully we'll get two or more epic space battles in the coming last two episodes to gawk at!
Man, can’t find it now but someone had posted the battle scene by itself on here. The top commenter was an account named Marco Inaros, profile image and all, simply saying “Lucky bullshit.” Top response, “Says the guy who died from Cthulhu rolling over and hitting the ‘snooze’ button.”
If you love well planed out "Realistic Space Combat" Fleet Vs Fleet. I recomend "The Lost Fleet" series of books and audiobooks "written by Jack Campbell" (A pen name of the Author John G. Hemry) He is curently publishing his 2rd continuing series of books, folowing the first six books. There is also two spin off series, that expand the world building well and consider intresting situations.
I love this, been subbed to your channel for a few years now and absolutely love your work. This kinda of breakdowns were always my favorite, so glad to see a ship battle that earned an Spacedock Honorable beakdown ;) Good work
One of my favorites now, right alongside my all time favorite of the Enterprise versus the Reliant. "Captain, an analysis of their tactics indicates a predilection for two dimensional thinking." "All stop. Don z-10000 meters."
FINALLLYYYYY :DDD could I suggest doing a ship breakdown for the heavy frigate? There's not that much info on it but just for the sake of completeness for all the modern MCRN ships
I think Bobbie just picked up on a pattern in both the Book and the show. I mean they aren’t up against highly trained naval officers and crews. Up until a few months prior, all the FN crew experience were from being pirates or smugglers. I doubt they see much rail gun combat in those day. Mostly ambushes, sneak attacks and running and hiding. So a fair amount of incompetence in a naval battle is expected from the FN vs EMC fleets.
Noticed that Marco's ships names were related to alexander the great , Pella was the capital of Macedonia and the birthplace of Alexander , Granicus was the location of a great battle that Alexander won. The only one that doesn't fit is the Lauber which is a word of German origin.
Especially poignant because he is reminded under no uncertain terms that all he ever was was a distraction. Ego and charisma basically just exist in order to get other people killed.
there are more historical references from this period, the new UN capital ship is Xerxes-class, the Martian admiral in s5 if i'm correct was quoting some persian king. There is like this undergoing theme of inners being analogy for Persians, and belters for Macedonians/Greeks fighting overwheming force and defating it
So in sync with you... this combat in the books was my all time favorite space combat sequence (and a very top tier sequence of any book I've read). I think I re-read that portion of the book repeatedly like 3 times when I first read it. They did a GREAT job making this happen in the show.
Before I watch this video, I want to comment that I binged 4 episodes of the current season just to make sure I could watch this video spoiler free. Thank you for this service Daniel and the Spacedock Crew.
Excellent analysis as always. Minor correction: I think Bobby defined the Hammerlock as being too close to evade torpedoes back during her escape with Avasarala in the Razorback. You can also see the term used on Drummer's displays (as something like Hammalok) in the battle against the Koto and Serrio Mal. For rail guns, the term is CQB.
The space chase scene with the Azure Dragon was also great. Whenever there's a space action sequence I'm always on the edge of my seat. It's always high stakes.
The Rocinante completely wipe the floor with the FN and made them look bad despite being outnumbered 3 to in 1. Just an amazing battle showing the skill, planning and execution of how this crew work well together. OOF thumps up!
James Holden is the big surprise for the Free Navy. They hate him, in no small part because every time they fight him, he wins, even at ridiculously bad odds- for him.
On the show I’m noticing how the interior of the ships are large… but when the inhabitants of said ships step out to do repairs or other things… the ships look super small for what we’re shown compared to the insides.
It’s just a conceit of filmmaking so it doesn’t get crazy claustrophobic mentally and impossible to move cameras around. Same as how they’d be zero G floating all the time, but we have to film this in 1G so we have the mag boots as cover. I’m sure they’re “actually” quite cramped, like submarines. But the mental claustrophobia gets in the way of good storytelling and practical film set design.
Aside from the obvious that the interiors are larger for filming…. The ships themselves are built on an all or nothing armor scheme … basically they’re made of tin foil with some light armor in the engine room.
great review. Awsome and realistic space tactics. Also one of my favourite moments in the expanse and any TV scifi since the arrival of Delenn and her Minbari Warcruisers in the epic Bablyon-5 in "severered Dreams".
Which is a tactic that should be far more common. Realistically Marco’s forces should have hung back and kept their distance because the Roci had a rail gun. Between the three of the, they could have put so many missiles on target that it would have been impossible for the Roci to intercept them all. On the flip side, if Marco is going to chase you in a straight line…. Throw some shrapnel his way and Let him run into it. Expanse ships should carry defensive missiles to do just that…. Throw out a low dispersal cloud of shrapnel and micrometeorites for the enemy ship to crash into.
So great video, but just some minor nit picking corrections First, it was Ceres, not Tycho that fired off the missiles that diverted one of the Free Navy ships. Roci was traveling to Tycho for an important anti-FN OPA meeting there and was just leaving Ceres Second, the Roci did manage to take out one of the ships with its railgun rounds in the book. Marco, in the books, simply left it adrift to continue his pursue of Holden, where as in the show the other ship offered aid. But yeah still overall amazing video and great work ^^
Is it possible the belter fleet wasn't aware the roci carried a railgun, since it's not standard equipment on a corvette-class gunship? They might have not been looking out for it.
The main problem I see with Inaros is that he seems to think he's invincible, that everything will go his way. If something goes wrong, it's never his fault, but rather someone else's, even in situations that he created, such as this battle. I can't imagine any scenario in which the Free Navy gains victory in this war, much less holding power for long (and almost certainly becoming the spitting image of, or something even worse than what it overthrew, like in real-world rebellions), especially when it's already splintering into factions and has had its reserve asteroid weapons' and supply depots' locations so completely compromised.
@@logicplague I’ve seen that video too, but I’m not confident that it really is. If you extrapolate the size of the Zenobia by assuming it and the Truman class have the same railgun, then it’s much larger than the Truman, though this is unlikely, as this would imply that the Zenobia’s PDCs are twice the size of the Truman’s, which wouldn’t make sense. If you assume that the two have the same size of PDC, which is far more likely, the Zenobia is marginally shorter than the Truman, more like akin to a heavy cruiser in size. IDK though, nothings been confirmed.
Always dodging to port reminds me of another famous space battle, where Khan indicates simplistic 2D thinking and Kirk is able to anticipate his moves...
Also note that they were burning, meaning they were accelerating towards the rounds all while the rounds are moving towards them. Even if they weren't normally dangerous to the ship due to it's armor plating. Hard burning THROUGH a cloud of rounds moving in the opposite direction... may very well result in those rounds having the energy needed to make a mess of you.
The plus side is the Free Navy are flying AT the rail gun so their reaction time must be lower than it might otherwise have been. Same for the smaller gun fire. Lots to be said for an experienced crew in this scenario too, how many kills has the Rocinante got at this point?!
Why would their acceleration towards the Roci affect this? The Roci seems to be accelerating at the same pace so from the reference frame of the Pella the rail gun acts with "normal" velocity..
@@pseudonymousbeing987 Normally you are moving around each other in different vectors when you're in railgun range. But in this case, the Free Navy was moving at a straigt line towards the Roci. That indeed makes it easier to hit them.
Nope, reaction time isn't affected... Both ships are flying basically at the same speed, and in the same direction, or in other words, there is no real speed difference... And that's all that matters. It's was basically the sam as if both ships were stationary. The fact that the pella flying towards the round is canceled out by the round itself being fired from the roci, wich is flying in the opposite direction of the fired projectile.
This is one of the best TV series made in recent years. I wish they'd kept creating more seasons. There are so many stories still to be told in the universe they created.
The Roci is purpose designed to be a hybrid torpedo bomber and screening vessel. In real life carrier fleets operate with a large number of corvettes and destroyers as screening vessels spread out around the central carrier and her tenders with the intent to intercept any missiles or aircraft directed at the carrier. It would make sense therefor that the Roci and her sister corvettes will have a disproportionately large number of PDCs compared to hull volume. The Pella on the other hand seems to be a dedicated missile boat, having just enough PDCs to cover itself and primarily acting as a mobile torpedo magazine. In a prolonged battle of trading torpedoes the Pella would have simply overwhelmed the Roci given some more time, the only reason they ended up losing that confrontation is because their crew were untrained, none of the Free Navy personnel have experience in combat.
Pella has 9 pdcs, but is MUCH bulkier than the Roci so the PDCs basically are just enough to cover every aspect with a few guns. The Roci is more of a predator, able to shoot 4 of her 6 to the rear, or 5 of the 6 forward...... As for torps, the MCRN light frigate is actually deficient here with its 4 launchers and 20 fish, it only has as many launchers and fish as the much smaller Morrigan class patrol destroyer, while the Pella carries 'several hundred' fish........
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out The Sojourn here! www.thesojournaudiodrama.com/
“Might enjoy”, more like “will enjoy “😊
would really enjoy it, if you covered the azure dragon assault from ep2 too.
Have you played Space enginers , you will like it
whats up with this polka dot filter over the entire video? its pulling my focus, no bueno
They alot of maintenance on the PDC as indicated by Amos in the episode.
_“Good Marines shoot at where the enemy is. Great Marines shoot at where the enemy is going to be. Godlike Marines make the enemy go there.”_ - Bobby Draper, probably.
hha. haha. nice one🤣
This comment wins the internet
Did you just make that up?
@@ThePartisan13 Not exactly, I stole the first 2/3rds of it from Wayne Gretzky's famous quote about good and great hockey players. :)
Being a Marine myself, this isn't far off from actual shit we say.
Imagine making a 360° no-scope a tactical maneuver.
The Expanse never ceases to impress.
The Holden maneuver.
@@rafaelsantosx or a "Crazy Holden".
@@rafaelsantosx Bull might have call it "the Skinny poper"
More like a 360 all the scopes on target. Targeting computer about to melt.
The Roci Rotation
The Holden my beer
The Old Pella
The Draper Drop
The 3 shot monte
The Jimmy Jank
The Tachi Tussle
The Choke Hold
The Rocinante Santé
The tactic of having multiple weapons with various travel speed hit the target at the same it is called "Time on target". It is a very effective way of preventing the defender to be able to deal with each attack individually. It was used effectively in Babylon 5 when the Centauri battlecruiser attacked the station.
"Time on target. Aye"
Can't wait for the B5 reboot.
@@didyeaye2481 It will either be amazing or really terrible. The CGI should be a massive improvement... the acting... I am scared ;)
@@patrickhuffman9632 Another variation I heard about was to fire a high mortar sort of shot, quickly reload, fire a flat trajectory shot. My dog was trying to bite the water from above when suddenly there was another from the side. LoL
@@Calendyr 😂 let's be honest, as good as it was (especially for the time) B5 was hammy enough in spots.
I'm hoping JMS is free from the interference he endured making it in the first place.
I'm hoping. 🤞🤞
@@patrickhuffman9632 also known as MRSI or mercy Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact. The over pressure from it can be just as devastating as the attack.
I love bobby "fuck it we tried" Then launches the nukes. LOL, She is a true warrior. Always looking to get the job done.
Even though in a serious time, her pouting later about the odds of a dud torpedo were funny, then Peaches pointing out her bad math
Chest Puller would understand Bobbie, there is no such thing as quitting or as when he was informed that the Chinese had them surrounded his response was "Now we know where they are".
@@thomasb1889 There's an Ausie line too, if I remember right it goes something like - the Commander "We're surrounded? Then we don't need to worry what direction to shoot."
The Azure Dragon capture was pretty good too. I loved how the Roci's hull was left glowing red hot every time it passed through the Dragon's drive plume.
I know right! It looked so awesome, the way they keep adding new dynamics to each battle never ceases to impress me.
And you know that if Alex had been piloting, he'd avoid it. Especially since it's probably a belter tactic to try to burn pursuers with the drive plume
Yeah! Those drive plumes are freaking hot
I love how every battle uses different tactics. The Amuh-Ra battle was much different than this one, just like the one last season against the Free Navy ships. The Azure Dragon required a different approach than the Pella
@Grim Looters I usually assume the magnetic containment that directs the drive plume out the back also collects the heat from internal radiators throws that out the back too.
That way you don't need the radiators to be as exposed or as passive.
In the book, the Pella did dodge to starboard repeatedly which gave Bobbie the idea, but she also engineered a situation where they would dodge to starboard anyway by having her missiles coming from their port side, so they would sideskip away from the missiles.
If i remember correctly, she thinks to herself 'Ok three times is a pattern' or something similar before setting up her trap.
Yeah, that makes the most sense. Honestly, the scene is so fast in the show that analyzing it like this is pretty much required to fully appreciate it. That's fine and good for a show and fanbase like the Expanse... Almost a sort of fan service to make 'overanalyzing' payoff.
Doesn't the book also make it very clear that the dodge is being done by The Pella itself where as the show seems to but a greater emphasis on the dodge tactic being done by the crew.
@@L8ugh1ngm8n1 While I haven't read the books yet, I would assume that the Pela's computer is doing the dodging, since no human could react fast enough to the railgun rounds. It is much more plausible to attribute the pattern to a computer.
@@L8ugh1ngm8n1 Id imagine its kind of like in Star Trek when the Captain can say "evade pattern Theta" and the helmsman just selects it from a list of pre-programmed maneuvers to dodge railgun fire, as no Human could react that fast. It would also stand to reason the Belter crew is still pretty green to top-shelf Martian warships and what they can really do, unlike xXX360NoScopeHoldenXXx that do crazy flying on the regular, Bobbie took advantage of their inexperience.
Expanse really out here trying to occupy the entire Top 5 best space battles ever put to screen all by itself
I reckon by season end The Expanse will occupy all 5 slots. Maybe 4 of the 5. The battle of New Caprica in BSG is still amazing.
@@gregs7562 New Caprica is still sad every time I see it. Pegasus is my favorite sci-fi warship.
You're all clear kid, now let's blow this thing and go home
The best part? Not a single one of the consoles is filled with high explosives. A round will go thru...and leave a trail.
Well it would deserve it, every single spaceship scene in the show was top notch. Battle or not.
Really the only problem with the space battles in The Expanse is that their is not enough of them.
facts
True, also rarely show larger fleet strategy. Which is another way of saying more space battles.
@@harmonyspaceagency1743 I really hope that the last episode will have a huge battle
@@Luca-ok6sw it has to, the only way to deal with the free navy is a confrontation and the Rocinante can't do it alone, they will have to get help from the MCRN or the Inner sphere navies, it will probably have an outcome like firefly where the final episodes are leading up to and eventually coming to the conclusion.
Of that we can agree. I need more. So much more!
The retrofitted belter ships are unlikely to have top-of-the-line military-grade sensors of purpose built warships like like the Pella and Roci, which might be another factor in how Holden’s crazy-Ivan shot worked.
This could be why Holden decided to take his first shot at one of the belter ships instead of the Pella. Since the element of surprise only applied to the first shot, if the odds of success were the same no matter the target, it would have made most sense to take the first shot at the Pella, by far the biggest threat. If the Roci crippled the Pella with the first shot, it should have been able to comfortably handle the two remaining belter ships. The only reason why you wouldn’t want to shoot the Pella first is if you think it’s better sensors (and also expected better pilot) would have given it too high a chance of dodging the shot.
Also the belter ships are smaller and weaker to railguns. If you remember the Heavy Frigate that the roci attacked, the ship took a full 5 shots before the 6th shot put it out of comission.
Most belter ships are small and can be put out by one shot.
I haven't seen the televised Expanse yet, but I'd think that the Free Navy would have networked their CICs together so that whatever any single ship is able to see is seen by the entire fleet. The best ship in the attack force is the Pella, so the Pella would probably see the shot coming before the other two, as you said. The main difference in reaction time between the Pella and the other ships, assuming equally competent pilots (once again, as you mentioned, Marco probably had the better pilot at all times) would be how long it took the Pella to inform the other ships that the Roci was doing a 360 "no-scope", and depending on how the network was set up, the other ships would either get the Pella's telemetry first and try to dodge, or their systems will have processed this in the time the Pella was transmitting (depends on just how much worse the Belter sensors are than the Pella's). The range at which the Roci is engaging here would mean that any delay in communication between the Belt vessels would likely be quite negligible, and since sharing your sensor data with your teammates is a common practice even in the modern day, this would largely negate what disadvantages the Belter ships had in seeing the shot coming, reducing the delayed reaction to the mere milliseconds it would take for the Pella to inform its comrades about the incoming danger. I'd put it down to pilot competence, or simply the less disciplined pilots staring at the screen blankly and going "Wuh? The? ****-" or something.
Alternatively, Naomi could have been doing her thing and using the Roci's comm laser the way annoying kids sometimes use flashlights and (God forbid) laser pointers on their unfortunate victims. In the books at least, she would shine the comm laser right at the sensors of enemy ships to make it more difficult for them to aim, so if she literally uses the Roci to jam the enemy, then the Belter ships wouldn't be able to communicate with each other except (I assume) by tight-beam laser. Depending on how many tight-beam emitters the belter ships have, they might just be unable to communicate with each other effectively, or they would have to play hot-potato with the Pella's telemetry and pass the data from one ship to the next in essentially the same way some early computers were networked (sorry, I don't remember what this network structure was called! It's been a semester since I took computer engineering last) - everyone holds hands and passes data in a circle to your left while receiving data from your right, except with tight beams. If the victim ship was, in this structure, the "furthest" from the Pella (being the ship to transmit to the Pella, while receiving information as a hand-me-down from the other ships the Pella transmits to in the chain), and assuming Naomi can jam all of them at once and force the Free Navy to rely entirely on tight-beam, then the reaction time of one of those Belter ships would lag behind a significant amount, depending on how many tight-beams it takes for the Pella's information to finally reach them.
All jokes aside, it is also likely that the Pella's maneuvering systems are more optimized for combat and might be able to accelerate and maneuver laterally faster (e.g. the ship being a combat vessel means it likely has better thrust/mass ratios than the Belter-built ships, as well as more responsive controls) though since I know nothing about the TV series and the ships used in this sequence, I have no honest idea how massive these ships might be. Just wanted to contribute something to the discussion, even though for the most part I have no idea what I'm saying.
@@thursdaythought7201 I think it's mostly a matter of luck. A single railgun shot could probably take out any ship regardless of size. A single shot nearly took out the Pela and it's a cruiser. The round only needs to go through the reactor to kill the entire ship
@@SuperThest it could take out any ship in one hit but smaller ships are almost certainly gone in a single hits while larger ships, due to their size and increased armor, are less likely to be hit in a critical location (aka the reactor).
@@SuperThest The Pella was hit by PDC fire, not the railgun.
Honestly, I kind of like that the free navy just makes mistakes, espescially facing a railgun. I generally tend to find hyper competence by weird rebel groups and pirates in symmetric warfare to be a bit immersion breaking, and honestly a touch lazy. I think the Expanse has done a great job at showing that Inaros forces are at their strongest when they're doing things traditional planning would never have foreseen, and having them be really good at traditional combat almost takes away from that to me?
Ya, the Free Navy is great at coming up with an unorthodox plan to overcome their weakness in the face of a superior enemy when they control the timing and location of the battle and then following that plan to the letter, but any time they have to improvise to respond to something they do not expect, they often face plant. Their first plan to destroy the _Rocinante_ with a booby trap was only thwarted by the _Razorback_ happening to be the first to get there (they would have been destroyed instead) and Naomi's godlike engineering ability. Their second plan to take down the _Rocinante_ in combat in the last episode of S5 would have almost certainly worked if Drummer hadn't intervened. Following a check list is easy, making split second decisions when things go pear-shaped is hard.
Marco basically yelled "Squirrel!" and then rushed in without a plan beyond having superior numbers.
@@GuardianOwl Yeah- it sort of comes down to relying on tactical genius rather than actually having good fundamentals.
Unfortunately, I do find the Expanse struggles to convey competence a bit in general. It did a great job in the fight with the Donnie, but from there on it started to feel less and less like any ship that didn't contain a hero was crewed by anything at all (The attack on the ring-gate coming to mind first.).
It would stand to reason the Pella's Belter crew are still rock hoppin' Belters more than hardened Martian soldiers, likely still not that familiar with their shiney new warship or its full capabilities. Inaros got by initially on populism and terrorism, but now the inexperience of his rag tag fleet will be their undoing battling guys like Holden that fight above their weight on the regular.
It’s quite logical, actually. Any reasonably intelligent and well informed individual can put together a decent plan. Making snap decisions under pressure requires training and experience. A professional will always beat a skilled amateur in their field -- especially warfare.
For reference, it takes 4 years to train a cadet to be an officer, and that officer candidate will be learning lessons that cannot be gained except from the training experienced officers and soldiers can provide.
@@adamkares7549 And the fact that Inaros spaces people who fail him. Holden and team (minus Alex) have worked together for a long time and built up a lot of trust.
I really loved how Marcos said (in this same episode?) that the Free Navy was going to pick apart the UN and MCRN forces with hit-and-run tactics.
Then as soon as he pride gets involved he "goes Inner" and charges haphazardly at the Rocinate who decisively defeats him with a literal hit-and-run tactic.
It was overconfidence. One of their ships was more than enough to take on the Roci and they had 3 so basically overkill. What he failed to consider is the fact the crew of the Roci was already at peace with dying and was ready to do anything and everything just to put in as much hurt as they could which in turn led to their victory thanks to performing unconventional dangerous maneuvers
Well said.
I am so sad to see The Expanse go after just two more episodes. Season 6 is really bitter sweet to me.
What I really like about The Expanse battles is how they are different from each other. They're all their own scenarios with very different resolutions which go far beyond Star Trek's or Star War's usual battles of ducking it out until one side has no more shields and explodes.
In Star Wars/Star Trek defense they didn’t have CGI back then though the original Star Trek implied that battles were like the ones in the expanse.
True this is a bit bitter sweet of an ending. That said the next Chapters in the story happen decades after this.
I have no doubt we'll see more of the Expanse. Just not with the current people in it.
After season 6 I'm going to have to start reading the main books. While the producers hinted at the possibility of the last 3 books getting to screen sometime in the future I don't to want to wait that long.
@@armedmage Read them, you won't regret it.
@@armedmage both are amazing. This isn't a situation where I can go "the books are better", since the show handles the foreshadowing and character introductions better... But the books action scenes are "higher budget"
Books 7-9 would be really expensive to make, since the action gets bigger. That combined with the time skip is understandable.
I'm still hoping for a trio of movies to cap it off.
I feel like the show did its absolute best to recreate this book chapter, and they did an outstanding job all things considered. However, in my humble opinion the book sequence just cannot be topped. The tension, the desperation, and the teamwork between Bobby (as the gunner) and Alex (as the pilot) just cannot be topped...
And the tragic end too. Just gut wrenching when you reach the description of medical alarm going off after the celebrations of victory.
@@TealJosh Much as I appreciate the drama of it, I think Fred's death in the series worked better. His character almost seemed played out by this point in the book, and you can see it in how he is discussed and his own feelings about things in his POV chapters, whereas on the show he went down more at the height of his relevance and it made good sense the Free Navy would do this as part of their opening play. His dying when he did on the show had much more impact on the overall plot even though less personal impact for the main cast.
In the book the ship always dodge the same way, Boby even remembers a instructor of hers talking about how doing anything more than 2 times is a mistake
The book mentions a specific reason why the Pella did it. "Twice the Pella had dodged the rail gun. Both times by firing all her port maneuvering thrusters-sidestepping-and then correcting on the starboard. It kept her pointing the same direction, not veering away." They just made a habit out of it.
There is nothing in there about combat instructors in relation to the tactic that put the Pella out of commission. It is only in relation to the rail gun spin that the instructors are mentioned.
@@wneo7 she remembers the time a instructor said that having habits is a mistake, thats why she mentions habit in this part
@@lucasrembold1144 The battle is primarily described in Chapter 27 of 'Babylon's Ashes'. Instructors are mentioned only once, in one paragraph. "A high-speed three-sixty with a precision-timed rail gun shot halfway through the spin wasn’t exactly standard combat tactics for Martian frigates, but she thought her old combat-tactics instructors would have approved." Am I missing something?
@@wneo7 i may have confused that with the habit part. But i am pretty sure she says something about habits being a mistake
@@lucasrembold1144 Yes. They are described as a chink in a armor. "She fed the firing solution in again. The moment of sickening spin, the bang of the rail gun, the crack of the couch taking her in. But the Pella did it again. It dodged the same way. It was a pattern, and patterns were gaps in the armor. She could fit a knife in there."
Isn’t Bobbie’s tactic a small scale version of Marco’s own “stealth meteorite” tactic, with the PDC rounds playing the role of small, effectively invisible projectiles?
I guess it is. The difference though is that Bobbies attack worked on The Pella moving in to the fire and required some additional tactics to encourage the situation to occur. Marco's tactics worked more on the hubris of the MCRN and UN just parking three battleships in a fixed orbit next to the gate. After all who's going to take on two Trumans and a Donnie?
Another thing to note is that while the tactic is used offensively in the show and Marco is given credit for the attack in the books it's actually Michio Pa that comes up with the tactic and suggests it as a way of defending the gate and Medina from being retaken.
Maybe that's where Marcos got the idea. Round and round.
Which was also something that Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about in the book "2312". Clusters of small meteoroids all meet at the same time and place in space, directly over a target. Instant obliteration because of the tracking gating size they use.
Good point, so she used TWO of his own tactics to take him out. That, and the hit and run tactic.
Really the only thing that didn't translate over from the books was the incredibly punishing transition between high-g and free fall and back the crew had to endure every time the Roci flipped to fire the rail gun. The show often does a good job factoring in the physiological constraints of the folks onboard these ships, and it added so much tension as written in the book, so it's a shame it didn't really make it into this scene. Otherwise, this was very satisfying.
They aren’t hitting that high of g’s probably only accelerating at 3 or 4 g and then dropping to 0 in this battle
@@jacobprittie2010 8-10 g's in the book, not that 4 g's would be trivial to Naomi or another Belter. High stakes indeed.
Wasn't it the the high G that killed Fred off?
@@jameshuke354 Yup
One thing that The Expanse has tripped up on is its depiction of the physiological differences between Earthers, Martians, and Belters in general. I remember in the first season the actor that was cast to play the Belter in the interogation scenes on Earth was really tall and slim, and it was shot in such a way that his physiology was exagurated and gave him the almost alien look that (as I understand) Belters have in the books, whereas as the series has gone on these physiological differences are almost ignored completely. At one point they touched on the fact that Earth ships can accelerate harder than Martian ships not because of their technology, but purely because the Earther crews are more resilient to the Gs involved. I wish they did more with that as it's rarely come up in actual space battles since. Also it would be cool to see the strength differences between groups play out in a hand to hand combat situation given that an Earth would seem almost superhumanly strong compared to a Belter.
On the rail gun range, you need to take into account that the target is also moving(Edit: accelerating) in opposition to the round therefore the closing speed is higher and the effective range is greater.
You are technically correct, but the railgun round is orders of magnitude quicker than any ship, so the increase in range would be minimal.
It doesn't really matter, because the ship itself is also moving away from it's target. The only real factors are the distance and relative speed between the 2 vessels. Based on the dialogue of Marco saying "keep distance from the ship", the relative speeds should be close to 0, assuming that both ships were accelerating at roughly the same rate.
@@basedandredpilled7920 But as taking from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where the First Order was chasing the Resistance. In a realistic scene, both group of ships wouldnt be needing to burn fuel for moving. But as the chasing ship want to chase up, they do need to burn to keep accelerating, which means the chased ship would need to do the same for getting away. In theory it comes down to which of the ships had a better accelerating and rocket/booster power to shrink that range, so I think in a way both of you are correct
@@basedandredpilled7920 I was thinking that, base on what happens the relative speed of the round origin point to the ship it's shooting at should be closer to 0, I don't think the Pella would gain much in the time it takes for the round to reach it
If both ships are moving at relatively the same speed and direction, then from their frame of reference there's no difference between this and the ships being relatively stationary. The round is moving in opposition to the target, but it was fired from a ship that wasn't, and that momentum is conserved.
My guess for the PDC's is that the Corvette-class Martian frigates have a pretty huge amount of point defense for a small vessel. The Morrigan-class destroyer is like 3/4ths the size of a Corvette-class and only has 2 PDCs, whatever class heavy frigate the Serrio Mal is from the season 5 finale had the same amount of PDC's as the Roci, but was much larger, heck the Pella is a light cruiser, probably many times the size of the Roci and the Pella only has 9.
You put 6 point defense cannons on a ship whose size normally would warrant 3-4, you're gonna need a LOT of missiles to overwhelm those defenses since those missiles have a very small target with those unusually high defenses.
Also neat little detail, on Holden's console for the railgun, it says "1 kg Tungsten slug loaded." The light railguns seem to be about the same caliber as the PDC's, which are 40mm shells. A 40mm Bofor shell weighs about 2 ish pounds, which is about one kilogram. Goes to say just how much more damage a projectile can have just by going faster.
It also helps that the Roci was likely meant to be an escort for the MCRN Donnager. It'd make sense to have more turreted escort vessels with the pride of your fleet.
It's always been my opinion that the Roci and her class are close support frigates, which explains why some can be carried inside a Donager Class battleship. They're only sortied when the Battleship needs more support, which isn't often so you may as well save on oxygen and reactor pellets by keeping your support docked until needed.
@@cruciasnz9937 Precisely.
@@chrisdufresne9359 I think the Wiki says the Donnager-class can either hold 4 Corvette-class frigates or 8 Morrigan-class destroyers. I'm guessing a Donnager-class would hold Morrigans for more offensive engagements and Corvettes for more defensive engagements.
@@gunfumaster1024 So the Roci is essentially an extra CWIS system?
I'm hopeful to see some more The Expanse content soon. Battle breakdowns, Force Recon ship breakdowns, and more!
I need a force recon on the UNN Zenobia as soon as possible.
@@brooklyn560 Same. I'm wondering if the Nathan Hale-class is the equivalent of the Xerxes-class in the books? And also Force Recon for the MCRN light cruiser (I'm pretty sure it's the Raptor-class, but I'd like to be sure) and the MCRN heavy frigate (I've seen some Screaming Firehawks refer to it as the "Orion-class"?).
One thing I am loving with the new season is the camera work on the ship exteriors. They're taking their time to show off the details of the amazing ships they've created, and I'm absolutely loving it!
The expanse has the best detailed space battles. Like in the episode where they are chasing down the spotting ship, you could see the hull glow red every time they got too close to the drive cone. The little details make rewatching them so much fun.
That the support ships are also retrofitted industrial ships probably also means they wouldn’t have combat computers that could detect/avoid rail gun fire.
It may be that pilot also is not experienced to combat railgun fire. Not much belter ships have it I suppose. Belters are cool and all but their warfare is mainly pirating. Large scale ship combat may not be in their expertise. While inner pilots would have extensive training in this kind of combat because their main adversary was other inner fleet.
@@modisp Agreed, though Spacedock already covered that angle as well. Just wanted to also mention another detail about the scene that explains why the Roci crew didn't just have plot armor.
true they might just use them primarily for intimidation and to add targets and dumb firepower to their actual navy.
@@modisp consider that apart from the Roci and the stealth ships, the *smallest* ship you see with a railgun is a HEAVY CRUISER. Since no-one has fought a stealth ship and survived apart from the Roci crew, and up until that fight no-one has ever fought the Roci and survived, it can be said that the only living people that have ever fought a ship smaller than a heavy cruiser with a railgun mounted are the crew of the only remaining ship smaller than a heavy cruiser with a railgun mounted....
The expanse battles are great examples of how to do the tension in space combat correctly. So often it's just "Shields are at 80%, Shields are at 60%, ..." And the shields levels never make sense as the first couple hits take shields down below 50% in like 3 shoots then the ship survives like 6 more shots and it's like shields are really low we can only take 2-3 more hits and it's like... WHAT!?! The math doesn't add up there.
The threat and dangers are so inconsistent that it makes it hard to take anything serious. Where as in more grounded space combat shows there often is no shields and it's more like traditional naval warfare where a single lucky shoot can mean the difference between life and death. Where planning and positioning matter more than who has the biggest guns. It also builds more tension as you can have grazing hits which do damage but don't cripple the ship causing secondary issues to arise, like fire, vented air, and etc.
Yup, the only reason shields were ever invented, is so that showmakers didny have to damage their very expensive spacecraft filming models, with todays tech things like the expanse can luckily be made :)
@@thomaswijgerse723 This is also why there were transporters so they didn't have to constantly use the shuttle set or do effects work for it
I always had a thought about how to do shielding without following the usual 'invisible energy bubble' effect, that would also be reasonably realistic for a shield: Ferrofluid drawn out and shapred into a shield by magnetic fields, that way you can see when the 'shield' is up, and when it's being damaged by incoming fire splashing against it, possibly pierce through the shield, and hit the hull
shield power is clearly like phone battery, that last 5% last way longer than the 100 to 95%
you dont understand. shields at 50% with first shot. with second shot shields at 25% with 3 rd shot 12.5% do you understand. 100% are most vulnerable and go down 50%
in this case a factor 0f 0.5 reduction per shot. or it could 0.4 0r 0.6
Love the battle and the CGI used. Really want to see The Lost Fleet series of books done. The space battles there are truly amazing in their description and blows most others out the water!
thats a good point, those books would make a great show fairly easilly with todays sfx
There’s a lesser-known game I like called Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. The early parts of the game are set in a solar system not too unlike the Expanse. Now they don’t have Epstein drives or any other means of ships being able to zip around (except fighters, but those are hardly a formidable force), and the designs are a little more grounded and boxy. Your initial ship, a heavy corvette called the Stiletto actually has engines at both ends (three on the back and two on the front). This allows it to slow down without flipping around (which is pretty slow). The game also shows thrusters firing whenever ships are maneuvering (and also thrusters firing to stop a turn). Many of the heavier ships have rotating rings to provide pseudogravity for long interplanetary voyages (a typical trip from Earth to Jupiter takes many months). When I see those ships I immediately think of B5’s Omega or the Leonov from 2010 (which inspired the Omega).
I honestly wish that lasted longer than a few missions before you start getting into futuristic designs and battles. One interesting tidbit is that most weapons in the game are turreted. Only one weapon in the game is of the “forward firing” type: the siege laser, and that one is basically a massive beam designed to break through powerful fortress shields and requires the combined power output of three ships to charge and fire (during that time they can’t do anything else). So fights often involve ships maneuvering to bring other turrets to bear on the enemy, while also trying to dodge in order to throw off enemy targeting.
Early on, there are three types of weapons: ballistic, laser, and missile. Railguns are the basic ballistic guns, and they use to hit the enemy hull until the integrity drops to critical (usually 25%), at which point the ship will begin evacuating the crew, leaving behind a floating hulk (it can be destroyed, but there’s no point). Lasers are for precision subsystem targeting and do very little hull damage. They can be invaluable in disabling certain enemy systems, though, although your sensors first have to identify them. There’s also an automated laser flak grid that will attempt to shoot down fighters, shuttles, escape pods (yes, that’s allowed), and missiles (it’s usually a good idea to keep fighters grounded until the enemy flak grid is disabled or destroyed). Missiles are limited in number and are usually a long-range artillery option. A hit can deal significant damage to the target and anyone around it (it’s usually a nuke), but a good flak grid can intercept it. A fighter screen can also add a secondary layer of anti-missile defense.
Later on, you get into futuristic tech and stuff like shields and their counter: the energy shells. Energy shells are designed to knock down or overload shields but do no physical damage, so that’s when you switch to ballistic weapons, which usually aren’t great against shields
Take my Like for bringing up Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, & with such vivid detail! :)
Thank you for sharing ^_^
Nebulous fleet command is this game but better
I watched this battle again every day after it aired. :D The 360 no-scope railgun shot is amazing and then Bobbie's PDC trap is just perfection. My only quibble is that they fire another torpedo at the Pella at the end, rather than putting a round from the railgun through them to cripple the ship. Plotwise, it's so Holden can disable it, but strategically it made sense to go for the option that wouldn't definitely blow the Pella up if they didn't really want to destroy her.
It was Bobbie that fired the missile right? I think she wanted a kill.
@@pseudonymousbeing987 Yes agreed, but Holden could have put a railgun round through them.
@@PetersonZF Once the Pella was taken out it stopped accelerating, while the Roci was still burning full tilt to get away, and there was no sign they had flipped to decelerate during their surrender demand to Inaros. Its probable that the Roci had simply gone too far for effective railgun targeting and turning to slow down or remanuver to bring the railgun to bear when they did not have too makes sense.
a railgun hit could simply go throught the ship without causing fatal damage.. like the Donnager being pierced clean throught.. a nuke warhead missile was definitily a kill .. i mean what would they do? railgun the Pella until some hit pierced the reactor bottle and vaporized it? when a single missile was all they needed
@@sparrowlt That's my point... Holden specifically didn't want to destroy the Pella. But he overlooked the option of fucking it up with the railgun, which left at least *some* chance of taking Marco alive.
I wish you would have zoomed into the roci‘s tactical screens the show showed the total torpedo complement including that they fired 4 torpedoes and the PDC’s that jammed has more pic rounds
and also that the railgun held 'seven in the clip and one in the hole'.... not important in this particular battle, but it meant that during the earlier Roci vs 5 FN ships battle, since they fired 2 at the destroyer and 6 at the frigate, the Roci's railgun was DRY at that point - which probably explained Holden's desperation in wanting the other ships (which turned out to be Drummers, but he didnt know that) to surrender - he knew his magazines were dry, the FN did not.
Kudos to the people who came up with this, the writers. Turning defence into offense, in a space battle, The Expanse raised the bar.... Respect!
Expanse got the space battles i didn’t know i needed so badly
Regarding the reliability of the Roci’s pdc guns, maybe the ship has machine learning capabilities, and the more torpedoes thrown at it the better it gets at shooting them down. The time period previous to the books/show had few full blown battles like this (remember the Captain of the Donnager drinking coffee during the battle), so the Roci has tons of real world experince. So what I’m saying is the Roci is a Saiyan in ship form.
Knew as soon as I watched the episode you’d do an analysis. I was not disappointed :)
As much as I'm going to hate seeing an end to your Expanse videos after the series wraps up, I'm really looking forward to your Top 10 Expanse battles after season 6 concludes.
I believe that the Belter pilot programmed the maneuver and set it on auto (the alternative of doing it manually is nonsense). But since a) Belters are not the best trained for open conflict. And b) corvette sized ships with railguns are still a new-ish thing of the last 5 years or so. It was always the same maneuver without rotating the side movement.
It'd be hard to do many things in high G, so it'd make sense to offload a lot of trivial maneuvers on the ships computer. Just another macro.
At least, that's how I imagine flying a ship in the future will be like, just more of the same trivial moves, so why not make macros to ease the job?
Although maneuvers like that are usually preprogrammed, it appears that military pilots from Earth and Mars are used to plot different scenarios and different maneuvers into their ship AI. The Belters simply are inexperienced in open combat and don't understand the importance of drilling for different combat scenarios. That's why they programmed such simple evasive maneuver.
New-ish?
More like completely unique.
The only other ships smaller than a HEAVY cruiser with RGs were the protogen stealth ships. And the only person alive to see them in combat is.... Holden, who commands the only remaining ship that size with one.
The only other people alive who have seen a railgun on a sub heavy cruiser in battle are Drummer and her crew, and the Tycho Roci crew (Bull ect).
Even ships the size of the Pella dont have railguns in the MCRN, UNN, and FN.
I have also been waiting years for this battle.
By far my favorite space battle of all time.
The way that they visualize the PDC tracers on the show is one of the coolest looking effects
Awesome. That kind of skill and luck happens in real life as well, as this reminded me of HMS Venturer sinking U864 in WW2. Both subs submerged, U864 maneuvering in three dimensions, HMS Venturer's captain works out the firing solution and sinks the U-boat with a spread of torpedoes. No AI, no fancy modern computers. For anyone that questions how such pin point timing on gunnery could possibly pay off, chances are someone in history has been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
When you guys get the chance, could you PLEASE do a breakdown of the UNN's new _Xerxes_ Class Battleship? The thing's a freaking monster, it even gives the _Donnager_ Class a run for its money
2:25 While I'm sure there's plenty of plot armoring here, the in-universe reason for the Corvette-Class Frigate having such effective point defences is that it was designed to help screen targets for larger ships and battle groups such as the Donnager-class and other MCRN capital ships.
Some UNN and MCRN ships that are several times larger than the Corvette-Class have a similar or even lesser amount of PDCs
Indeed. One of the things I like most about the Expanse is that warships have clearly defined roles. I particularly liked the implication that if the captain and crew of the Donnager hadn't been so cocky and had launched their frigates for the battle, they wouldn't have lost to the Protogen stealthships but because they chose to fight unsupported by their screening ships...
I seem to remember in the book that the Belter ship dodged the same way each time which gave Bobbie the idea for what transpired.
Thank you for this excellent analysis and commentary.
The hard science of Expanse battles happens so quickly on screen, it needs slow-mo retrospective in order to be understandable. Your combat breakdowns absolutely enrichen the fan experience of this show!
Interesting what you said about competent personal. It’d be really interesting if you made a video about your ideal crew from lots of franchises
I'd have drummer Alex Naomi and bobbie
I remember watching this on show. I was astounded and though "whoaw what a great tactical move" when I saw the Roci shoowing PDC rounds off target and the Pella dodging into those rounds.
Bobby is essentially just master chief for the expanse universe. Absolute fucking BEAST
On the subject of accurate shooting, I can’t help but recognize just how important this is in historical naval combat.
Submarines are an example of ships where the crew is the most important element to creating a successful ship. Maneuvers were important to be sure, especially speed to get ahead of your prey, but accurate shooting was critical. At best, a German Type VII submarine had 12 torpedoes inside the boat (and two reloads outside), while a Type IX had 12-15 if carrying overload weapons (I’ve only seen 2 of the 3 occupied at once). A typical US Fleet Boat had 24 weapons. If you ran out, you had to head home or if you were lucky attempt to take on torpedoes from another submarine (not necessarily a dedicated supply boat). Accurate shooting is paramount, which is why some submarines boasted about getting at least one hit every time they fired or, in the absolute best cases, a clean sweep with a hit for every torpedo fired (such as Tang’s final patrol, although her last torpedo sank the boat).
In naval gunnery you often have examples where certain ships have extremely good accuracy. At Jutland Iron Duke fired 43 rounds in 4:50 at Koenig at a range of 12,600 yards for seven hits, but the other ships in the same battle line had far more difficulty getting individual hits due to haze and smoke.
In other cases, the fire control is the deciding factor. At Denmark Strait Hood had very outdated fire control and was the only one of the four major combatants not to score a hit. Prince of Wales scored rather well given the weather, gun breakdowns, inexperienced crew (at least for the ship), and her extremely limited working up period. But the Germans had the better visibility, good enough fire control, and a proper working up period to train their crews, with both German ships hitting Hood and Prince of Wales at least twice in the incredibly short battle.
Denmark Strait also illustrates another point relevant to this battle that could be used in some sci-fi. When Prince of Wales was turning, her precision would decrease: the turn spread her shots out more than when she was holding a steady course. Every shot has some inherent spread regardless of weapon (though some are better than others), and this is an element that would likely still exist in space combat.
Spread in earth exists mostly because of the air, temperature and humidity. You dont have those in space. If your guns are properly aligned your are good, railgun in particular where there is no chemical reaction (another source of variation) should be pretty consistent as long as your firing systems are good
@@nahuelleandroarroyo Spread, or more accurately imprecision, is inherent in any system no matter the location. To have a system that precisely placed a shot in the same spot every single time you must ensure that all the forces are identical (to the Newton), that every single piece (including ammunition) is identical between actions (no wear), and that every single piece is in the exact same location down on the micrometer level (no thermal expansion, critical in space combat). That level of precision requires very costly systems, which is why snipers get better ammunition than the average infantryman.
In this case, we know the ship is maneuvering differently in a straight shot vs. an over-the-shoulder shot. Relative to the bore axis, this introduces a lateral force that would, all else equal, tend to send the shot in the opposite direction of the flip. This lateral force would also introduce additional variables, such as causing the round to have different contact with the barrel components and different interactions with the magnetic fields that propel it. These inherently introduce different mechanics to the point of impact.
You see this all over the place. For example, a tubular magazine underneath a rifle barrel means the weapon vibrates slightly differently with the first and last round in the magazine. On earth or in the vacuum of space, this means there is a different point of impact depending on how full the magazine is. Thermal control is critical in many systems on earth and every system in space, and thermal expansion would change the precision of any followup shots. Barrel wear is a major precision problem, and all firearms have a certain barrel life rating as at a certain point the barrel must be replaced.
@@Imbeachedwhale Yeah, and solid railguns we've tested so far have *horrible* wear on the rails...
5:27 in artillery gunnery that's called "Time on Target".
Great video. The writing for this whole show is simply amazing. I been a scifi fan for DECADES. This simply is the best show.
The only thing missing that would’ve made this battle prefect, was Alex.
It truly was a shame seeing how they done alex and even the drama behind the scenes I don't think justifies what was decided. Have him apologise publicly and move on. If not re cast him, at least then he's not dead. That said, I think they done justice to the character by mentioning everything he done for the crew, for the rocci and the guilt and grief they all carried with alex being gone. Still a bitter pill to swallow.
@@Marth667 After 5 seasons, recasting Alex would’ve been distracting. And I can’t imagine anyone replacing him. Still the crew could use another Belter or Martian. My wish would be if they come back for a season 7+ they could cast someone to play his son and take the helm.
What happened off set was tricky. The legal team, HR and PR’s advise would’ve been to drop him, at least until they knew how the it play out. I’m disappointed with the decision, but I can understand. I don’t know much about Cas beyond what Wikipedia says and his work on the Expanse to truly judge him personally, nor did I witness what happened. Better people than me are needed to make those type of calls.
Yeah, it's too bad the actor didn't seem to get along with the others very well, because in-scene they were always magic.
I think what I love most about the way this battle was shot was how the sweeping camera angles really sell the idea of a high speed chase at great distances, as well as clearly establishing who's got the high guard in the chase and what advantages it provides.
it was an incredible fight showing the experience gained by the crew during the shows seasons.
OH HELL YES, I'm so stoked to see this covered
The staff on this show are detailed and awesome thank u each ship is different and u can see the details
This was such a short scene but it blew me away. I loved it. It was one of my favourite from the show. Looking forward to reading the book.
This was one of my favourite battles in all of sc-fi.
Engines with equivalent power installed at opposed ends of a ship would be stupid, ESPECIALLY in the expanse:
You spend 99% of your time accelerating/deaccelerating to force the crew into the deck and provide a sense of gravity.
Two engines means twice the complexity and weight, which isn't bad by itself, but then factor in you can only ever use one at any time which basically makes it utterly pointless.
The small/med ships can flip and burn really fast...as seen from just this battle alone.... So what's the point?
Larger, slower flipping ships would just have an aft rail gun....
Agreed. Realistically it would be a waste of engineering resources, space, etc.
Just drop mines out the back…. It worked for Jango :)
@@Wintermute909
Yeah, it don't make any sense with the razorback either.
It's a fast racing ship so you would think extra mass to fling about would be a concern, and i would hazard a wild guess that another whole freaking engine core and drive cone would be basically the majority of the mass in the razorback in the first place...
It would be the equivalent of installing another engine, gearbox and 4 wheels on an F1 car which you can't use unless it goes backwards...
So I was thinking about how you mentioned the efficacy of the Roci's point defense weapons.
I though of this as a potential explanation of why a hero ships defenses might be better than their opponents. Let's imagine that the automated defense systems are controlled by a machine AI. These AI can be trained to a point in simulators prior to installation on a ship, but they would continue to learn as they were involved in more and more conflicts. The Roci was originally the Tachi which was a ship assigned to the flag ship of the MCRN and probably had a long and distinguished carrier prior to us even meeting her. This would have allowed the AI system to learn more and more about how to hit oncoming missiles. Then after Holden and Co get her she gains even more data to improve the AI. Eventually leading to a superior targeting system.
It's also worth noting that the class of ship in question is partially designed to escort MCRN battleships, so has a disproportionate number of railguns relative to size.
I like the ideas of ships gaining more XP from their adventures.
I really do appreciate y'all making The Sojourn in an audio format. Beyond the added benefit of sound effects, music and different voice actors for different characters, the audio format allows me to enjoy your writing in general. I have vision issues and don't often read hardcopy books or digital copies of books because it's harder for me. I read very slowly and process what I read slowly, and with such a great series being in audio form, I don't miss out on it. Thank you Spacedock
Glad you're enjoying it! The audio medium is something I really get a lot out of and it's been super rewarding writing and producing for that format. - Dan
Always look forward to a Spacedock breakdown of a Rocinante Space battle, hopefully we'll get two or more epic space battles in the coming last two episodes to gawk at!
Man, can’t find it now but someone had posted the battle scene by itself on here. The top commenter was an account named Marco Inaros, profile image and all, simply saying “Lucky bullshit.” Top response, “Says the guy who died from Cthulhu rolling over and hitting the ‘snooze’ button.”
A great review, thank you! I am used to people putting shows down, but you don't, very refreshing!
HELL YEAH, loved this. Edge of your seat television!
As soon as i saw this battle i had hoped you'd do a video on it. Well done, thank you!!
If you love well planed out "Realistic Space Combat" Fleet Vs Fleet. I recomend "The Lost Fleet" series of books and audiobooks "written by Jack Campbell" (A pen name of the Author John G. Hemry) He is curently publishing his 2rd continuing series of books, folowing the first six books. There is also two spin off series, that expand the world building well and consider intresting situations.
I love the Lost Fleet series! The dialogue is so hammy! I never found a forum for it though.
Bro i was so worried it wasn't going to be you reviewing this and I'm literally so fucking excited when I heard your voice!
Me: Whats the best battle in The Expanse
SpaceDock: Yes!
I love this, been subbed to your channel for a few years now and absolutely love your work. This kinda of breakdowns were always my favorite, so glad to see a ship battle that earned an Spacedock Honorable beakdown ;) Good work
One of my favorites now, right alongside my all time favorite of the Enterprise versus the Reliant.
"Captain, an analysis of their tactics indicates a predilection for two dimensional thinking."
"All stop. Don z-10000 meters."
FINALLLYYYYY :DDD could I suggest doing a ship breakdown for the heavy frigate? There's not that much info on it but just for the sake of completeness for all the modern MCRN ships
I think Bobbie just picked up on a pattern in both the Book and the show. I mean they aren’t up against highly trained naval officers and crews. Up until a few months prior, all the FN crew experience were from being pirates or smugglers. I doubt they see much rail gun combat in those day. Mostly ambushes, sneak attacks and running and hiding. So a fair amount of incompetence in a naval battle is expected from the FN vs EMC fleets.
I, like many others I imagine, instantly thought two things upon seeing this battle:
[1] Holy $%£#.
[2] Can't wait for Daniel's breakdown on this one.
Noticed that Marco's ships names were related to alexander the great , Pella was the capital of Macedonia and the birthplace of Alexander , Granicus was the location of a great battle that Alexander won. The only one that doesn't fit is the Lauber which is a word of German origin.
Suitable for someone with such enormous delusions of grandeur.
Given that the most accurate analogy for Marco is, Hitler, that's on point too.
Especially poignant because he is reminded under no uncertain terms that all he ever was was a distraction. Ego and charisma basically just exist in order to get other people killed.
there are more historical references from this period, the new UN capital ship is Xerxes-class, the Martian admiral in s5 if i'm correct was quoting some persian king. There is like this undergoing theme of inners being analogy for Persians, and belters for Macedonians/Greeks fighting overwheming force and defating it
So in sync with you... this combat in the books was my all time favorite space combat sequence (and a very top tier sequence of any book I've read). I think I re-read that portion of the book repeatedly like 3 times when I first read it. They did a GREAT job making this happen in the show.
I really hope they announce something like a movie is coming at the end of the season.
Wow, this analysis has extrapolated my love of this series even more.
I am extremely excited to see the final battle in this season, which will likely follow the book in its resolution.
It's all but guaranteed. Can't wait.
Yup the table is set for the conflict to end the same way.
Before I watch this video, I want to comment that I binged 4 episodes of the current season just to make sure I could watch this video spoiler free.
Thank you for this service Daniel and the Spacedock Crew.
Excellent analysis as always. Minor correction: I think Bobby defined the Hammerlock as being too close to evade torpedoes back during her escape with Avasarala in the Razorback. You can also see the term used on Drummer's displays (as something like Hammalok) in the battle against the Koto and Serrio Mal. For rail guns, the term is CQB.
The space chase scene with the Azure Dragon was also great. Whenever there's a space action sequence I'm always on the edge of my seat. It's always high stakes.
The Rocinante completely wipe the floor with the FN and made them look bad despite being outnumbered 3 to in 1. Just an amazing battle showing the skill, planning and execution of how this crew work well together. OOF thumps up!
James Holden is the big surprise for the Free Navy. They hate him, in no small part because every time they fight him, he wins, even at ridiculously bad odds- for him.
No Sci Fi show has been more realistic about space physics than The Expanse and that makes it so awesome.
On the show I’m noticing how the interior of the ships are large… but when the inhabitants of said ships step out to do repairs or other things… the ships look super small for what we’re shown compared to the insides.
It’s just a conceit of filmmaking so it doesn’t get crazy claustrophobic mentally and impossible to move cameras around. Same as how they’d be zero G floating all the time, but we have to film this in 1G so we have the mag boots as cover. I’m sure they’re “actually” quite cramped, like submarines. But the mental claustrophobia gets in the way of good storytelling and practical film set design.
Aside from the obvious that the interiors are larger for filming…. The ships themselves are built on an all or nothing armor scheme … basically they’re made of tin foil with some light armor in the engine room.
great review. Awsome and realistic space tactics. Also one of my favourite moments in the expanse and any TV scifi since the arrival of Delenn and her Minbari Warcruisers in the epic Bablyon-5 in "severered Dreams".
Also, Bobby went full Thrawn
Sieging a planet with cloaked rocks
Your channel is so under appreciated big fan your space battle break downs.
Honestly this was so far my favorite battle made me laugh a good bit with them basically being forced into pdc fire
Which is a tactic that should be far more common. Realistically Marco’s forces should have hung back and kept their distance because the Roci had a rail gun. Between the three of the, they could have put so many missiles on target that it would have been impossible for the Roci to intercept them all.
On the flip side, if Marco is going to chase you in a straight line…. Throw some shrapnel his way and
Let him run into it. Expanse ships should carry defensive missiles to do just that…. Throw out a low dispersal cloud of shrapnel and micrometeorites for the enemy ship to crash into.
So great video, but just some minor nit picking corrections
First, it was Ceres, not Tycho that fired off the missiles that diverted one of the Free Navy ships. Roci was traveling to Tycho for an important anti-FN OPA meeting there and was just leaving Ceres
Second, the Roci did manage to take out one of the ships with its railgun rounds in the book. Marco, in the books, simply left it adrift to continue his pursue of Holden, where as in the show the other ship offered aid.
But yeah still overall amazing video and great work ^^
Is it possible the belter fleet wasn't aware the roci carried a railgun, since it's not standard equipment on a corvette-class gunship? They might have not been looking out for it.
The first officer aboard the Pella told Inaros that they have a railgun. However, they might not have relayed it to other belter ships.
@@gunfumaster1024 I suppose that's plausible
@@entropy11 After all, Inaros kind of is a bit of a hothead and gets tunnel-visioned too easily.
My impression was that Bobbie was just a grunt,..so the fact that she pulled off some amazing tactics as a gunner on a gunship is quite incredible.
I always thought she was the MCRN equivalent to a Marine Raider.
The main problem I see with Inaros is that he seems to think he's invincible, that everything will go his way. If something goes wrong, it's never his fault, but rather someone else's, even in situations that he created, such as this battle. I can't imagine any scenario in which the Free Navy gains victory in this war, much less holding power for long (and almost certainly becoming the spitting image of, or something even worse than what it overthrew, like in real-world rebellions), especially when it's already splintering into factions and has had its reserve asteroid weapons' and supply depots' locations so completely compromised.
His ego is his fatal flaw, apparently.
Without a doubt.
Been waiting for this video since the episode aired 😍
You should make a breakdown of the new UNN mega battleship and Pella
I NEED details on the Zenobia!
@@redharvest298 someone else made a video on it, it's a Xerxes-class and it's basically the UNN's Donnager-class
@@logicplague I’ve seen that video too, but I’m not confident that it really is.
If you extrapolate the size of the Zenobia by assuming it and the Truman class have the same railgun, then it’s much larger than the Truman, though this is unlikely, as this would imply that the Zenobia’s PDCs are twice the size of the Truman’s, which wouldn’t make sense.
If you assume that the two have the same size of PDC, which is far more likely, the Zenobia is marginally shorter than the Truman, more like akin to a heavy cruiser in size. IDK though, nothings been confirmed.
@@logicplague I've seen that video and part 2 just came out yesterday.
Looking forward to your breakdown of the battles in the series finale!
Always dodging to port reminds me of another famous space battle, where Khan indicates simplistic 2D thinking and Kirk is able to anticipate his moves...
I rewatched that movie right after this episode aired just so I could get that same fix 😁
Great video! Loved this battle too
Also note that they were burning, meaning they were accelerating towards the rounds all while the rounds are moving towards them. Even if they weren't normally dangerous to the ship due to it's armor plating. Hard burning THROUGH a cloud of rounds moving in the opposite direction... may very well result in those rounds having the energy needed to make a mess of you.
Great show!
The plus side is the Free Navy are flying AT the rail gun so their reaction time must be lower than it might otherwise have been. Same for the smaller gun fire. Lots to be said for an experienced crew in this scenario too, how many kills has the Rocinante got at this point?!
Why would their acceleration towards the Roci affect this? The Roci seems to be accelerating at the same pace so from the reference frame of the Pella the rail gun acts with "normal" velocity..
@@pseudonymousbeing987 Normally you are moving around each other in different vectors when you're in railgun range. But in this case, the Free Navy was moving at a straigt line towards the Roci. That indeed makes it easier to hit them.
@@Kai-tn4yx Ah, fair enough. Silly me, smart you. I should have considered tactics in my physics.
@@pseudonymousbeing987
There was nothing silly about your question!
In fact, it was insightful to be reminded that it's a matter of perspective :)
Nope, reaction time isn't affected... Both ships are flying basically at the same speed, and in the same direction, or in other words, there is no real speed difference... And that's all that matters. It's was basically the sam as if both ships were stationary. The fact that the pella flying towards the round is canceled out by the round itself being fired from the roci, wich is flying in the opposite direction of the fired projectile.
This is one of the best TV series made in recent years. I wish they'd kept creating more seasons. There are so many stories still to be told in the universe they created.
when the Pelta has 8 CIWS but only uses 4 of em, the rocci has 6? and torps and a makeshift railgun? a bit overloaded it seemss... hmm
The Roci is purpose designed to be a hybrid torpedo bomber and screening vessel. In real life carrier fleets operate with a large number of corvettes and destroyers as screening vessels spread out around the central carrier and her tenders with the intent to intercept any missiles or aircraft directed at the carrier. It would make sense therefor that the Roci and her sister corvettes will have a disproportionately large number of PDCs compared to hull volume. The Pella on the other hand seems to be a dedicated missile boat, having just enough PDCs to cover itself and primarily acting as a mobile torpedo magazine.
In a prolonged battle of trading torpedoes the Pella would have simply overwhelmed the Roci given some more time, the only reason they ended up losing that confrontation is because their crew were untrained, none of the Free Navy personnel have experience in combat.
@@youtubeisapublisher6407 Yeah, it only takes one torpedo to sneak through.
Pella has 9 pdcs, but is MUCH bulkier than the Roci so the PDCs basically are just enough to cover every aspect with a few guns. The Roci is more of a predator, able to shoot 4 of her 6 to the rear, or 5 of the 6 forward......
As for torps, the MCRN light frigate is actually deficient here with its 4 launchers and 20 fish, it only has as many launchers and fish as the much smaller Morrigan class patrol destroyer, while the Pella carries 'several hundred' fish........
Finally the breakdown I was waiting for!
Daniel! Nice to hear you! ^_^